Android cameras getting a huge advancement thanks to Qualcomm

Qualcomm is stepping up the mobile imaging game thanks to its Spectra Module Program.

As the cameras in our mobile devices become essential to how they operate, it's only natural that we're going to start seeing more advances in what exactly they can do. To that end, Qualcomm has announced an update to its embedded image signal processors (ISP) on Tuesday that is capable of improved biometric authentication and high-resolution depth sensing. This won't just benefit mobile, however, but will also be usable in head mounted displays (HMD).

"Whether used for computational photography, video recording, or for computer vision applications that require accurate motion tracking, it's clear that power efficient camera image signal processing has become more important for the next generation of mobile user experiences," said Tim Leland, vice president of product management, Qualcomm Technologies Inc. "Our breakthrough advancements in visual quality and computer vision, combined with our family of integrated Spectra ISPs for Snapdragon, are designed to support an ecosystem of cutting edge mobile applications for our customers."

The advancements in the ISPs and camera modules will support upgraded image quality and computer vision use cases as well as bokeh quality image experiences. It should also allow for these improvements to roll out to the market even faster. The new platform will build off of last year's advancements in low light photography and video zoom with improved support new modules capable of active sensing for biometric authentication, structured light for computer vision applications, dense depth map generation and segmentation.

In more immediate improvements that consumers will interact with, the second-generation Qualcomm Spectra ISP will new hardware and software designed specifically for these advancements improving both image quality and power efficiency in Snapdragon platforms. It will also feature multi-frame noise reduction along with hardware-accelerated motion compensated temporal filtering (MCTF) with inline electronic image stabilization (EIS).

These improvements aren't anything you should expect in the next few months, but they will all be included in the next flagship Snapdragon Mobile Platform.